Students Give Mixed Review Of GOP Debate

OU Students gather for the GOP Debates held on campus. (WWJ: Stephanie Davis)

ROCHESTER (WWJ) – There was mixed reaction from the crowd of about 300 students who watched the GOP debate Wednesday night on the campus of Oakland University.

“I’m a little disappointed, I’m consider myself a libertarian … it kind of seems like a bash Obama fest for the most part,” said one student.

“I’m kind of disappointed, I really haven’t heard anything to kind of separate any of the candidates from each other. They kind of all agree on the same problems,” echoed another student.

“I’m really impressed with how they addressed working on health care … how to reform health care,” noted another student.

“I think that Cain has got the respect of the country, I could tell that from the audience here, Romney is the hometown candidate and Newt Gingrich is the smartest,” one student declared.

WWJ Newsradio 950’s Stephanie Davis reports that an electronic survey taken before the debate showed most students watching the debate identify with Republicans.

The early campus survey showed former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney would be the GOP candidate to run against current President Barack Obama – if an election was held today.

WWJ Legal Analyst and Talkradio 1270 Morning Show Host Charlie Langton, who was in the audience, said “Mitt was it.”

“There’s no question, in my mind anyway, it was Mitt Romney,” said Langton.

“He seemed to be right on point, he looked presidential and as far as the big question to him, is whether or not he can justify that not bailing out the auto industries. And he said that he would help the auto industries by having a structured bankruptcy process and not allowing control to go to the auto industries by the UAW and Fiat,” he continued.

Langton, though, said Texas Governor Rick Perry caused the most buzz when he said he would close three government departments, and then struggled to remember them.

“He was asked to name the agencies that he would close down, trying to kind of whittle away the government, and he named a couple of them right off the bat, commerce and education, and then it was silent and it seemed to go on forever. And people were, nobody was helping him. He looked over to Ron Paul, ‘Give me an answer,’ he looked the other way to Bachmann, she didn’t give an answer, and it was just simply painful,” said Langton.

It took ten minutes for Perry to give his third answer: the Energy Department.